The Burt Bacharach Discussion Forum

Les Reed had a strong association with Tom Jones and in all the press coverage I've seen since the announcement of Reed's death the same two songs were referenced each time, It's Not Unusual and Delilah, with no mention at all for either Daughter of Darkness or I'm Coming Home. I personally think th...

I always thought that Kiki Dee seemed to be singing well within herself and tended to come across as just too nice and polite to really let herself go. The one time that wasn't the case was in the mid-70s when she had a brief spell as a 'rock chick' and toured the UK rock circuit with her own band o...

I think the new song is ok but nothing to get excited about and probably the best thing about the record is Michael Ball's vocals, something that's a surprise to me as I've never really been a fan of his. I don't recall it creating much of a stir here but Ball actually recorded a hit album of Bachar...

.... It was particularly gratifying to hear the Jobim influenced 'Closer Than The Sun' from 'Filth And Dreams' because this remains the only album of theirs I don't own in any format: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu2vlcS1Htc We don't own 'Filth And Dreams' either and according to Allmusic it's one...

Hank wrote:What a voice. What a version of this song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkRokLkgg-I

Yes, tremendous.

One of his greatest performances was of Jacques Brel's 'Jackie', which because of its lyrics was rarely played on the radio at the time.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eKtZf62BQzM

Another "magic moment" from one of those Superb 'Bacharach TV Specials' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPXX7OQqMXY An "official" DVD / Blu-ray release of all those "vintage" shows is long overdue. 'blue' The kids in that excerpt from one of Burt's specials were from t...

Previn during his stint with the LSO talking about conducting and sending himself up beautifully.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j0U70qefrZA

He was as charismatic and as good a communicator as Leonard Bernstein and I remember a series of programs he made for BBC television in the 70s in which he talked about a specific piece of music, usually a symphony or a concerto by a famous composer, went through it stage by stage with the London Sy...

Despite the billing I can't imagine that the format of these two concerts will vary too much from when Joss Stone last performed with Bacharach in 2016, when she was introduced mid-way through what up to that point had been one of his standard shows, sang 9 or 10 of his songs with a lot of banter in...

In common with Bacharach he was simply in a different class as a composer, arranger and musician and I'm really going to miss seeing him on his frequent trips to London.

We have her two albums from the early 60s on which she collaborated with a couple of jazz greats, firstly pianist George Shearing and then alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley. From the album she made with Adderley and his band here's 'Happy Talk', in the days when albums of this nature could get in...

I first became aware of the song 'À Bicyclette' as recorded by Yves Montand on a family holiday in France in the early 70s but it was only fairly recently that I discovered it was composed by Lai.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzbrjxqwpoo

Yes, even when it may be as much as forty or fifty years since they wrote their best-loved music it still feels like a terrible loss when great composers go. I love to hear all the sumptuous chords to perhaps Francis Lai's most famous tune played on the piano. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=izotHO8p8h4

Putting to one side questions of taste and decency, I don't think the original last line, "Or we're all fucked", was ever going to be very singable and I'm glad the record company got Bacharach to change it to, "Before it's too late". As Elvis Costello was involved in the recordi...

If Bacharach's only contribution to 'He's Given Me Things' is but a single chord change then I doubt if it was much more for this collaboration from more than a decade ago. My feeling is that even a team of highly skilled musicologists would struggle to detect a single note of Bacharach in this. ht...